Tag: web development

PHP : Composer Galaxy

PHP has one of the greatest, in my opinion, dependency managers – Composer. The tool works mostly with the public projects via the Packagist website (although it also supports private repositories).

There are over 200,000 packages available on the Packagist to choose from. However, the stats could be a lot better.

Today I came across a mind-blowing visualization of the composer packages and the dependencies between them. Have a look at Code Galaxies Visualization. You can find specific packages via the search, or interactively navigate the star map, like you are in the spaceship.

Stunning!

Our Software Dependency Problem

“Our Software Dependency Problem” is a great article going in-depth into the subject of the dependency management during software engineering.

Dependency managers have scaled this open-source code reuse model down: now, developers can share code at the granularity of individual functions of tens of lines. This is a major technical accomplishment. There are myriad available packages, and writing code can involve such a large number of them, but the commercial, legal, and reputational support mechanisms for trusting the code have not carried over. We are trusting more code with less justification for doing so.

Not only it nicely describes the problem in simple terms, but also provides practical examples and solutions to it. In particular, I enjoyed the section that suggests how to improve dependency evaluation in terms of design, code quality, testing, debugging, maintenance, usage, security, and licensing.

SpaceVim – extended Vim configuration bundle

There are many different configuration bundles for Vim, which easy the discovery, installation, configuration, and documentation of different plugins and features of this powerful text editor. SpaceVim is yet another one of these.

If you are new to Vim, or have grown tired of trying to tweak it to your liking, please give it a try. It might just work for all your needs.

fx – command-line tool and terminal JSON viewer

fx is yet another command-line tool for working with JSON data. Some of the supported features:

  • Formatting and highlighting
  • Standalone binary
  • Interactive mode 
  • Themes support

This looks like a good alternative or a complimenting tool for both jq and jo.

How to Slow Down to Go Faster Than Ever in Software Development

While reading through “How to Slow Down to Go Faster Than Ever in Software Development” I couldn’t help but nod my head in agreement continuously. The article goes over the well-known and familiar challenges in software development, but it also words them in a very simple and straight-forward way. It’s difficult to disagree with.

Here are a few quotes to get you started.

As Robert C. Martin mentions on the primary value of software at CleanCoders, “The ability of a software system to tolerate and facilitate such ongoing change is the primary value of software”. Rushing is evil in software development. Any attempt to rush causes dramatic damage in productivity, focus, people’s effectiveness, adaptation capability, and tolerance of software.
For instance, we always have time for fixing bugs, but no time for writing tests. We don’t refactor and write tests because we don’t have enough time. But we have time for debugging, hacking code and fixing bugs.
We focus on processes so much that we often forget the main asset in software development: people. Processes help people to improve the way they build products, increase motivation and cultivate a healthy environment. In the end, the efficiency of processes is important, but people are crucial.

Processes and tools do not build products, but people do. We have to admit, “talent hiring” is the most important functionality of an organization. It has direct impact on the future of the company and the product itself.
Hire the best talent for your organization. By saying “the best”, I do not mean the smartest, or most experienced people around. I look for passion, discipline and motivation at a minimum. If all three exists in a talent, the other skills can grow with ease. Hiring is a win-win process, so both sides should gain from the process. So you should slow down your hiring process and invest on improving it. People join companies in which they believe. So model the behavior you want to see. And through your company culture, your vision and people, make talent believe in you.

One thing is clear. Without having a quality codebase, you cannot be agile, sorry. The first thing you need to do is eliminate technical debt and resolve bugs. If you need to stop building the features for a while, and focus on eliminating bugs.
“Fixing bugs and deploying to servers afterwards” is not a proper procedure today. It contains risks and danger. We need a better and more disciplined way of doing it. When you want to fix a bug, first write a test and reproduce the problem programmatically. Then fix the bug and see that the tests are passing. Deploying to production is safe afterwards.